Currently most industrial products manufactured in large volumes, to be marketed and sold in big shopping centers and self-service stores generally include a primary canister, container, or package containing such products with preset weight or volume, and generally these variables are the due to consumers needs as a result of commercial experience or result of profound marketing studies.
Accordingly products in such primary canisters, containers, or packages have to be stored in other secondary packages or containers containing a set amount thereof in order to facilitate its handling, transportation, and commercialization, then they mat be stowed and placed on pallets so they may be loaded onto transportation means and then unloaded at points of sale, where they have to be un-stowed and removed from such secondary packages or containers to be placed on exhibitors at shopping centers and self service stores, where end consumers takes them when purchasing them.
Structural characteristics of the product itself and those of said secondary packages or containers do not allow stowing, which make transportation means carry low capacity loads, thus increasing transportation costs; in other cases, depending on the type of transportation, forces created during transportation as a consequence of stops, turns, and sudden movements caused by bumps and pot holes, packages tend to move and collapse; hence it is necessary to use a tertiary package with additional packaging material and structural materials in order to protect the product during transportation, which generates even greater usage of materials, higher packaging costs, and higher transportation costs.
Furthermore, most secondary or tertiary containing packages are closed packages, and do not allow showing and exhibiting of products, which makes it strictly necessary to extract contained products upon arrival at the points of sale in order to be placed on shelves and exhibitors specifically designed for such purpose, which requires additional labor for these intermediate operations or stages.
Otherwise, such as in shopping malls and self service stores, individually packaged products are usually set in islands, placed at various levels and piled on the floor, pallet, stand, box or similar devices, requiring a great deal of labor to order, pile, and group products.
Accordingly, the constant need to have safer, trust worthier packages that allow for protection of such products being transported towards end users, as well as the growing need to have bigger packages or bales that allow on one hand to hold the product, and at the same time exhibit said product at points of sale on the other hand, where they may be displayed to end users thus eliminating secondary packages and intermediate operations from packaging at the factory until they reach said points of sale, has generated the development of new packages that strive to fulfill these needs and avoid usage of or additional investment on acquisition of shelves and exhibitors.
Prior art includes various patents protecting and disclosing packaging structures, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,251,753 Pigot, et al from Oct. 12, 1993, referring to a combined product transporting and exhibiting unit, which includes a number of vertically stacked product containing trays with vertically supported divisions which keep a space between product containers. Under these shipping conditions, the bottom tray is housed and received within a flange that rests on a conventional shipping pallet. However each tray is provided with an individual angulated support member extending between a pair of adjacent vertically separated trays and a beam on each corner extending the entire height of this unit in order to provide additional structural support during shipping only.
The beams on each corner are only used during shipping, and upon arrival to their final destination at points of sale they are removed, providing only structural support for product protection during shipping; however such structure often collapses and bends as has described before.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,161,692 granted to Stanley E. Knierin on Nov. 10, 1992 refers to a container device with open faces, which includes a cover member with an inner division wall that forms cavities that receive corner beams having a lower outer wall in order to tighten and hold the corners of a household appliance. Such cover and corner beams may be used separately at will. This type of structures are designed to ship products only, more specifically devices of larger dimensions such as household appliances, in order to protect and stabilize such devices during their transportation, not for their exhibition at points of sale for other essential products of smaller dimensions.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,638,941 granted to Robert L. Watson on Jan. 27, 1987 refers to a cardboard container for shipping and exhibiting products, comprising of a plurality of product support trays vertically set one on top of the other, where the product on the lower tray supports the next upper product containing tray.
Said corner beams or corner pieces as reinforcing structural elements protecting the products on the above described structures, are made of compressed cardboard; however such compressed cardboard beams have always been used as packaging material and not as exhibitors.
However these described packages face the same transportation drawbacks described above and require a high amount of raw materials as packaging material and structural reinforcing material in order to protect the product, with the problems described before.
Based on the above and cited and described prior art patents, to this date there is still the need for a packaging structure that allows for containment, transportation, exhibition, and dispensing of large volumes of various products, such as the one described herein.